Christin's Words from Sunshine Hill

If it is to be music

you must be present to it, must offer to it

a profound self-remembering.

-from Altar Music

Friday, June 29, 2012

My New Novel on Kindle

This is a project I've believed in. It's a story I have loved, with characters that I grew to know over many years. It is the first of my novels to come completely from my imagination. In other words, its characters and plot don't in any way come from people or situations I've known from my own living. The themes, though, I have known. The silences of many midwestern men, I have known. The way life can make women harden and then break down the center -- that I've known, too. I know about running away when you just can't live another moment where you're standing. You'll be crushed, you think. You'll implode. You can't see any way out, and so if a crack appears, an aperture, the slightest opening, you'll rush towards it before it closes again. Just maybe, you think, there will be freedom on the other side, but there hardly ever is.

We suffer affliction; we forgive; we are forgiven--if not by one another, then by Life itself. The question always is: can we open to it? All of it? This story doesn't shy away from evil. These people know evil both subtle and obvious. They grapple with it. We wonder where the grace might be, from where the strength and light and faith might come to rise above or to embrace what is the perfect affliction for any given soul. It can break our hearts. It can reduce us to bone.

I suspect I wrote this novel to teach myself not to run away from what is most real in my life, but rather to face it, embrace it, learn from it, and be transformed. Over the years of visions and revisions (as the poet says) I've come to understand the challenge put to each of its characters. Their challenges reflect my own, as they might also reflect yours.

Author, Beryl Singleton Bissell writes after reading the book:

The
lyric beauty of Lore Weber’s writing transforms a disquieting story of
abandonment and loss into one that shimmers with hope. A complex saga of
several generations of women from four different families, the narrative peaks
around the life of one young girl, Hannah, whose courage uncovers the mystery
that binds these lives together. An amazing novel from a writer whose stories
gift us all. – Beryl Singleton Bissell, author of The Scent of God and A View
of the Lake.

GYPSY BONES has been published to the Kindle Store and is already available* for readers to purchase here.

The Root of Beauty

THE EDGE OF TENDERNESS

THE BLUE SHAWL

The FarNear Journals

GYPSY BONES

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About Me

I'm a writer and observer of beauty in nature and people, a singer of praise and a dreamer who stares into both light and darkness hoping to see someday the Face of God.
My journey has led from the northern lakes, to a convent on the prairie, to lifelong education including a doctorate in ministry, to a vocation of midwifery of souls, to this place, Casa Chiara, where the light shines and John Sack and I join our lives, care for nature, pray and contemplate, study and write.
Published Works:
THE ROOT OF BEAUTY: A SPIRITUAL MEMOIR, THE EDGE OF TENDERNESS: A MEMOIR, THE BLUE SHAWL,THE FARNEAR JOURNALS, GYPSY BONES,
ALTAR MUSIC,
CIRCLE OF MYSTERIES,
WOMANCHRIST,
BLESSINGS,
FINDING STONE,
CARING COMMUNITY,
A CRY IN THE DESERT.
Los Angeles Times Best Novel of 2000 for ALTAR MUSIC.
Recipient of four prizes/commendations for CIRCLE OF MYSTERIES.